Search Engine Rankings Summer 2011

The mighty Google’s U.S. search engine market share has dipped below 65 percent for the first time since September 2009, according to latest report released yesterday by, digital intelligence service, comScore. Another major rating agencyHitwise, still shows Google’s market share at just over 65 percent, while Bing continues to make modest gains.

According to comScore, the search engine rankings for August 2011 were:

Bing, which saw no growth in July, is up 14.7 percent (up from 14.4 percent)

Ask increased to 3 percent (up after two months straight at 2.9 percent).

AOL dropped again to 1.4 percent (down from 1.5 percent).

Google’s share of the market has not been this low since September 2009, although it should be noted that total search volume was much lower at that time, Google accounted for 9 out of 13.8 billion searches. During the same time period, Yahoo accounted for 2.6 billion searches and Bing for 1.3 billion searches (Bing launched in June 2009) in September 2009.

Compare that to comScore’s latest data from August, in which more than 17.1 billion searches were conducted. Google ranked first with more than 11 billion searches (down 1 percent from July); Yahoo had 2.7 billion searches (up 1 percent); Bing had 2.5 billion (up 1 percent); Ask had 510 million (up 3 percent); and AOL had to 229 million (down 9 percent).

So this means that in just under two years, overall searches have increased by about 3.3 billion, and Google has grabbed about two-thirds of those “new searches”, with Bing adding about 800 million, and Yahoo growing by about 100 million.

Hitwise reports that sixty-four more search engines it tracks accounted for 5.92 percent of U.S. searches

While Google may not need to start sweating just yet, there is one Wild Card, Baidu…

Meanwhile:

Chinese search engine giant, Baidu, announced a 95% surge in profit last month. It attributed this spike to its ever-increasing popularity, with a mammoth 84% market share in China.

With over 444 million Chinese-speaking Internet users and fast-moving technology, growth in Chinese use online has also surged, by almost 1,500%. In fact, this rise means Chinese-speakers now account for nearly a quarter of everyone on the Internet.

Indeed, it won’t be long belong Chinese overtakes English as the most common language online. And search marketers all over the world need to start taking advantage of this fact if they want to attract Chinese customers. So, don’t forget to submit your site directly to Baidu!